Fish'n For Ham

Dale and Kay Bullard usually bring me a couple of their outstandingly delicious ham sandwiches when the fish with me here at Amelia Island, and today was more of the same! These aren't "out of the package" ham sandwiches, these are sure enough true Honey Baked ham sandwiches, and homemade!  But there is that tad bit of pressure to make sure they catch some decent fish!

We met early this morning up at the Dee Dee Bartels Park boat ramp and made a 10 minute run over and into the Jolly River and then up to "Snook Creek" to begin fishing with jigs and live
shrimp Both Dale and Kay honed their skills trying to pick off small Croaker and pin fish that were stealing their bait. The tide was coming in and almost covering the oysters so we switched to float rigs and continued to work the marsh grass...to no avail.

After coming back towards the mouth of the river we set up just south of a mud/oyster flat drainage and this did the trick. First, Dale had a strong hookup - we both saw the wake boil out of there, but the fish must have wrapped the wire stem of the float around an oyster because it broke!  Shortly after that Kay had  good bite - it didn't take - but it came back and BOOM! Big Fish On!  Kay fought it expertly and battle it from the shoreline to out deep and from starboard to port, always keeping the pressure on, and soon brought it to Dale's waiting net - a big 25" Slot Red, and boy was it thick!

Only a few minutes later we had another good bite - another Slot Redfish on. This time it was Dale on the rod and he worked it patiently to the boat and waiting net. This one measured right at 20".  We picked up a couple of hungry Seatrout then made a move back to the outside of Tiger. The mullet were coming back in drovers and fish were busting them and finally, Kay got one to take shrimp and had a hookup. She reeled it in and tallied a 18" Seatrout.

We fished Bell River where Dale caught another keeper Trout then he put a keeper sized Flounder in the boat - they got a Slam! We finished the day back on the outside of Tiger. By this time our shrimp had died but it didn't seem to matter. The two anglers caught and released 4-5 more Trout before we called it a day, another great one to be fishing here at Amelia Island, Florida.